Scientists discover misidentified museum fossils are actually from the ancient ‘living fossil’ coelacanth

Paleontologists have discovered that dozens of fossil bones tucked away, and in some cases displayed in British museum collections for more than a century, are not fragments of reptiles or mammals at all but parts of ancient coelacanth fishes. The coelacanth is an ancient “living fossil” fish, thought extinct for millions of years, but still surviving today in deep oceans.

The re-examination of museum drawers and galleries dramatically increases the number of known British Triassic coelacanth specimens and alters scientists’ view of coastal ecosystems in what is now southwest England about 200 million years ago.

A “living fossil” is a modern species that has remained largely unchanged for millions of years and closely resembles its ancient fossil ancestors. It survives with few evolutionary changes, offering a rare glimpse into Earth’s distant biological past.


The work, led by Jacob G. Quinn (University of Bristol) and published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, identifies more than 50 late-Triassic coelacanth specimens that had been misidentified or overlooked, up from only four previously reported from the British Triassic. Quinn’s work began during an master's in palaeobiology when he noticed that bones catalogued as the little marine reptile Pachystropheus looked “a little fishy.”

"During his Master's in Palaeobiology at Bristol, Jacob realized that many fossils previously assigned to the small marine reptile Pachystropheus actually came from coelacanth fishes," said Professor Mike Benton, one of Quinn's supervisors.

He adds, "Many of the Pachystropheus and coelacanth fossils have uncanny similarities, but importantly, Jacob then went off to look at collections around the country, and he found the same mistake had been made many times."

Jacob Quinn said, "It is remarkable that some of these specimens had been sat in museum storage facilities, and even on public display, since the late 1800s, and have seemingly been disregarded or identified as bones of lizards, mammals, and everything in-between, From just four previous reports of coelacanths from the British Triassic, we now have over fifty."

According to the Sciencedaily website, to verify his findings, Quinn conducted X-ray imaging on several specimens, revealing that most belonged to an extinct family of coelacanths called Mawsoniidae, ancient relatives closely linked to the modern coelacanth species that still exist today.

Many of the fossils entered museum collections in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period of intense collecting when taxonomy and comparative anatomy were still developing. Modern imaging techniques (X-ray/CT) and a careful comparative review allowed Quinn and colleagues to reassign the material correctly.

Co-author Pablo Toriño, a coelacanth specialist, explained, "Although the material we identify occurs as isolated specimens, we can see that they come from individuals of varying ages, sizes, and species, some of them up to 1 metre long, and suggesting a complex community at the time."